Both major parties are selling us snake oil, or maybe we are doing a great job believing that snake oil is the cure. The oil we love has major ingredients in common.

Ingredient 1 — You do not have to make any sacrifices. You do not have to work harder, consume less or pay higher taxes, just elect us and everything will be fine.

Ingredient 2 — We need to attack the deficit and the debt, but not now because: “fill in an excuse.” We will fix that later.

Ingredient 3 — We will cut fraud and abuse of government programs thus producing savings that can reduce the deficit.

Then the two parties diverge.

Ingredient 4 (Republican version) — We will lower taxes, that will stimulate the economy, create jobs and increase government revenues. You will keep more of your own money so that you can consume more. We will cut “pork” and wasteful programs thus saving a great deal of money.

Ingredient 4 (Democratic version) — We will raise taxes, but not on you. We will tax rich people and wealthy corporations. We will give you the new services we know you need so you can consume more, that in turn will stimulate the economy and further increase revenues.

Reality — While both approaches could have benefits, alone, neither will actually fix the recession/deficit/debt problem. Neither party will compromise in some middle ground that might actually work. Why is this? It is because we keep electing extremists on both ends of the spectrum.

The excuse is that each party is controlled by extremists so we get no choice, but one extreme or the other.

Independents need to band together and defeat any extreme incumbent. As the parties see a revolving door every two to six years, one of them just might get the message and nominate a moderate who we can then re-elect. If we keep electing the people selling the snake oil, then as the old cartoon put it so well, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

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Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.